A Table Tennis Play (Walrus)

As this impressive first staging of Sam Steiner’s play opens you are immediately thrown into a dark and unsettling place – a bomb shelter (the venue is ideal for this) full of disordered family memorabilia and memories. The play deals with memory, social awkwardness and the preservation of public image. Central to the play are the interactions between Mia (Beth Holmes) and Cath (Rosa Robson), which are tense and uneasy at times but oddly tender at others; illustrating the weird openness we often have with people we hardly know. Hanging over it all is the impending literal storm outside and the tragic family ‘anniversary’ inside, but the tension built up is released in the cathartic final monologue of this well-staged and well-performed play.